Conversion of objects

Identity-laden material objects given by the laity to churches undergo a 'conversion.' Lay donors and clerical recipients of objects could read such a process in a plurality of ways, and often with time reinterpret its meaning. Each 'object-conversion' and each interpretation sought to establish and memorialize a specific and (it was hoped) irreversible hierarchy between the parties concerned or their heirs. Here the gift is not about some neutral 'social bond' but about authority - whose, and what kind? This article first establishes a typology of potential meanings, underlining the wide range of possible interpretations from protective cooperation or service and historical prefiguration to radical superiority. It then contextualizes in depth two 12th c. dossiers: first, the meanings of Abbot Suger's art collection, which changed from being the materialization of a political program to becoming the vector of personal memoria; and second, the narrative function of object-conversions as symbolic markers of the inalienability of ecclesiastical property in the Vita Meinwerci episcopi. ;